Henry David Thoreau Quotes

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America …. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

I very, very much want to be involved in helping those senators, congressmen, and women who support the principles that made America great.

The happy union of these states is a wonder: their constitution a miracle: their example the hope of liberty throughout the world

I loved being governor. It’s like running your own little country.

Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.

We can't have self-government without the self-confidence that is at the root of it.

I am going to make America great.

You don't know who to believe. Like Abraham Lincoln. He said all men were created equal. He never went to a nude beach.

Truth only needs to be for once spoken out; and there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, as makes men's memories her joyous slaves.

America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.

I thought [Donald] Trump going right to members of the Jewish community and telling them, "I don't need your money and I don't want your money," meant to me that he would be free enough to work for the good of America. I applauded him for that.

Part of the reason we like democracy is it's the portfolio of decades, which is to say you don't also get the disastrous dictator who completely destroys a society, engages you in wars and so forth.

The ideas of ancient Greece helped inspire America's founding fathers as they reached for democracy. Our revolutionary ideas helped inspire Greeks as they sought their own freedom.

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.

Democracy is a system that gives people a chance to elect rascals of their own choice.

Nobody said democracies supposed to be easy. It's hard. And in a big country like America, it probably should be hard.

A people unused to restraint must be led, they will not be drove.

It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of America.

Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our Nation, we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow Americans, this is our time. Let us embrace it.

With union grounded on falsehood and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable; the noisome is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one!

America is a country of laws.

I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor - even President, it seemed. And for the first time in the history of mankind, something new, called an astronaut. But like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero - that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun.

Democracy is not an incident that happens overnight, nor a gift that America can give to the world. It is a culture which needs peace to evolve.

But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedoms defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.

Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.